This invention provides improvements over the inventor's two earlier inventions: a first involving an auto-multiscopic 3D billboard display system and a second involving an auto-multiscopic 3D display system.
The first invention is described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/084,221, filed 29 Mar. 2016, now U.S. Pat. No. 9,411,167 (the '167 patent), issued 9 Aug. 2016: This application and the '167 patent are hereby incorporated by reference herein in their entirety. This patent is for a billboard display system that utilizes a light source housed in a box-like structure. The light source shines light away from a non-transparent front wall and through a transparent rear wall and thence through a sheet of projection film having an array of images thereon and thence is reflected by a corresponding array of concave mirrors back to corresponding apertures. The apertures are formed at the bottom of indentations, preferably cone-shaped throughout the area of the front wall. The light passes through the apertures and thence out of the indentations to create a 3D image in the eyes of a viewer looking at the front wall.
The second invention is described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/167,489, filed 27 May 2016, now U.S. Pat. No. 9,491,444 (the '444 patent) on 8 Nov. 2016: This application and the '444 patent are hereby incorporated by reference herein in their entirety. This application teaches an auto-multiscopic 3D display system utilizing one or more transparent organic light emitting diode (OLED) displays and Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs) to enable full motion 3D displays. This display system is expected to display dynamic 3D images on flat screen televisions, monitors, tablets, smartphones, and other electronic display devices without any need for 3D enabling glasses. The term auto-multiscopic is used to define a display that allows multiple viewers to view three-dimensional scenes on a display, simultaneously and without the need for 3D glasses.
The present invention teaches improvements to the systems described in the '167 patent and the '444 patent in order to provide a device operable as a 3D display and a camera.